VALLEJO

Austin, TX United States

Bio:
Started by the three Vallejo brothers from Austin, Texas, VALLEJO (VA-LAY-HO) melds modern rock with a 70’s funk swagger, swiveling Latino rhythms and superfuzzy guitars. Their unique sound has made VALLEJO one of the most popular bands to hail from Austin, Texas.

Raised in the small town of El Campo, Texas, the boys were introduced to the music of their Latino parent’s record collection which included the sounds of Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Tito Puente, and Santana, to name a few.

Alejandro recalls, “Our parents bought us three trumpets when we were fourteen and we pretty much learned the basics of music by playing in the symphonic, jazz and marching bands at our high school. Around that time we also started listening to all of the rock bands our friends were listening to and taught ourselves to play guitar, bass & drums so we could immediately start a rock band.”

VALLEJO quickly came up with a sound that was uniquely there own by taking the Latin sounds of their parent’s music and mixing it with the rock bands of their youth like Aerosmith and Santana. The band’s name also came easy since all of their friends would tell each other, ‘Let’s go see the Vallejos, or the Vallejo Brothers.’ Remembers Omar, “No matter how hard we tried to come up with other band names, our friend’s flyers and posters would say The Vallejos, so we just went with it and decided to call the band VALLEJO.”

After graduating high school, the brothers decided to bypass college and make a professional living out of playing music by moving to Austin, Texas, the 'Live Music Capital of the World'. In Austin, they added two more members (a conga player and an additional guitar player) to the group to beef up the Latin rock sound they were going for. For the next few years VALLEJO honed their sound in Austin’s rich music scene and toured extensively throughout the United States and Mexico with bands like Fuel, Stone Temple Pilots, 3 Doors Down, Juanes, Molotov, The Foo Fighters, Matchbox 20, Los Lonely Boys, Blues Traveler, Jimmie Vaughan, and Los Lobos."

Since then, the band has gone on to win numerous awards including "Best Rock Band" two years in a row at the Austin Music Awards, Austin’s Aguila Award (which recognizes achievement in the Latin Community), awarded their own "Vallejo Day" by the mayor of Austin, Texas, and was nominated for Univision’s “Best Latin Rock Band in Austin”. Vallejo has also had their songs featured in several TV shows such as WB’s Roswell, MTV’s Road Rules and UPN’s America’s Next Top Model.